“The Second Album” has its stigmas; the band try to find their sound, often it’s written on the road, usually it doesn’t compare to the debut release. It makes or breaks the band, at least until the third album. Yeah Yeah Yeahs took three years out of the limelight to record this album, and most of the new songs they wrote and performed on the road – ‘Countdown’, ‘Down Boy’, ‘Kiss Kiss’ – are no where to be seen. In fact, the songs they performed in New York this winter have also been ditched, leading to rumours that the album was recorded three times before the band were happy, that guitarists Nick Zinner had left the band in favour of Conor Oberst’s Bright Eyes and that Karen O was transforming the piece into a solo project. There is no doubt that Show Your Bones is Yeah Yeah Yeahs unnecessarily finding another sound; the band are straying away from their original trademark electric howl and not for the better.

I would tell you that, if you want to enjoy the album, you need to forget the old Yeah Yeah Yeahs, but for me that’s impossible. They made too much of an impression: they lived through their own hype, proved the doubters wrong, and released a spectacular debut album that kept the hope burning through all the years they were gone. The knowledge that they were in the recording studio helped me to survive. Then they emerged with this – it’s nothing that I expected. Some people will shrug and congratulate the band on moving on, some people will pretend it’s as good, a lot of the people who hated them before will love them now. But me? The people like me? With the exception of “Déjà Vu”, I hate it. I’ve seriously considering returning it. It’s like Test-Icicles releasing a folk album; it practically is Test-Icicles releasing a folk album! A band many people thought were a joke managed to prove that they weren’t, but their own success went to their head and they began to think they could do anything. They can’t, they’re here to make us ‘that’ kind of music, and if I have to go and set camp in Manhattan with nothing but a sandwich board and a loud speaker to prove this, by God that’s what I’m going to do.